project and window management in Atom

[annthurium]

Problem

Right now, the git and GitHub panes only work with a single project/repo at a time. If a user needs to work in multiple repositories, they can either:
a) have each repository in a separate window, or
b) have files from different repositories open in the same window. Whatever file is active / most recently clicked on, the git/GitHub tabs will show data from that project only. Since there is no visual indication that the git/GitHub tabs are refreshing or changing data, this could be a confusing experience if users don't understand what's going on.

Some of the future functionality we want to build into the git/GitHub package could add additional layers of complexity to our navigation. It would be good to get some information now about the scope of this problem and how many users it's impacting.

Open Questions

• How do users think about project management and window management in Atom? What cognitive models are they using?
• How common is it for users to work with multiple repositories at the same time?
• For users who work in multiple repositories, do they use a separate window for each project?
• If they don't use a separate window for each project, do they understand that the git/Github tabs are going to change data when they switch between projects?
• Are there other use cases we're not considering, such as users who have a git repository at the root of their home directory? How common are these use cases?
• Do we want to build support for multiple projects/repos in the same window for the git/GitHub tabs? Or is what we have now "good enough" for most use cases?

Data We Can Gather To Answer Those Questions

Metrics

• Instrument how many projects exist within a newly opened Atom window.
• Instrument when additional projects are opened in an Atom window.

User Research

• Determine the population of users we want to include in this research. (Open source maintainers? Students? Folks working on closed source proprietary software? Others I'm not thinking of?)
• Write a script with some open ended questions asking them to walk us through their workflows

[smashwilson]

Would there be any way to instrument the count of open Atom windows, too? ...Do we have access to telemetry in the main process?

Personally, on this machine, I tend to:

• Open one Atom window on my main monitor. This is my "input" instance where I actually write code. If I'm diving up and down between code in a library and its consumer (say) I'll use atom -a on the command-line to add multiple project roots here.
• Open a second Atom window on a secondary monitor as a "research" instance and open the same (primary) project. I use this one to do things like "remember what the arguments are for that method in another file I literally just wrote."

When I'm away from the desk, I use multiple project roots more heavily and multiple windows less, and I also make much more use of split panes.

This is all super anecdotal, and I'm sure we're all toward the "Atom power user" end of the spectrum, for obvious reasons, so I think it'd be useful to know what window usage patterns are prevalent out in the community, too.

[annthurium]

@smashwilson telemetry is exposed via a service on the metrics package - I don't think we have access to it in the main process. We could start another telemetry store on the main process, probably, but I'm not sure that's a great use of time.

I think user research would probably give us more useful information about whether having multiple atom windows is a common workflow. Even if it's a much smaller sample size, the information will have more context.

[lucascosti]

Personally, I'm fine with the current project/window management. I tend to re-use the same window by removing and adding repo folders in tree-view. Sometimes I have multiple projects per window, and sometimes just one.

One thing that I think Atom's git integration does very poorly with at the moment is remote management. I'd like to be able to interactively choose which remotes I fetch/pull/rebase from or push to, and I can't do that at the moment.

Ideally, I'd like to see a right-click menu option for "Pull from..." and "Push to..." to get prompted for the remote, and have the option for that interactive prompt to be the default action (i.e. always prompt me which remote I want for the action).

[annthurium]

@lucascosti this isn't the right place for a discussion on remote management woes. You're welcome to file a separate issue though and try to start a conversation there.